Between the Lives - By Jessica Shirvington Page 0,21

look at me and ordered me upstairs to bed.

I guess it was obvious I was drunk.

Her parting words informed me we’d be having a more in-depth discussion in the morning. I nodded and told her tipsily I was looking forward to the follow-up.

By some miracle, I managed to get out of my dress and into my pyjamas before I collapsed, face first, onto my bed.

When I woke up, it took no time at all for everything to come flooding back. It felt like reality reached out and walloped me across the face. Hard.

I was out of bed and in front of my mirror in an instant, staring at the same image of myself I always saw in this world – if a little puffy around the eyes. My long brown hair was stuck to one side of my face and hung down to just above my waist. I lifted my top to show a very normal bare expanse of skin over my ribs and belly, and both my legs and arms were unmarked save for the relatively small scratch I’d received in the basement.

I grabbed my watch off the nightstand. It was just after midday, which meant the laxatives had had plenty of time to work their way into my system.

I went to the bathroom. No sign of the packet-promised results. But while I was in there I did throw up. Due, I’m fairly sure, to my vodka-punch consumption over the course of the night more than anything else. I mentally chastised myself and resolved never to get drunk again.

I had no idea what to do with all this newfound information, so I opted for routine. I had a shower, changed into a cute sundress and put on my favourite red kitten heels. I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry, so I plastered a smile on my face and went downstairs – only to endure a forty-five-minute lecture from Mom.

After the tenth time she said, ‘I just want what’s best for you,’ I zoned out, studying the walnut grain of the dining table. Her heart wasn’t in it anyway. And when she huffed and pushed a sandwich in front of me, saying, ‘You look like you’re fading away,’ I knew the lecture was over.

The smart thing would’ve been to go back to bed. I needed more sleep. I’d lost count of how many hours I’d been awake – in both lives – before finally passing out in the early hours of the morning. But with my swirling thoughts sleep wasn’t really an option. And besides, there was something even more pressing that I absolutely had to do.

‘Cut it. Not too much, and shape it around the sides, leaving the length at the back. Colour needs to be much lighter, but with tones. Make sure you keep some warmth in there. But definitely blonde.’

The stylist forced a smile, looking at me like she was having second thoughts about her career choice. I sympathised, but held my ground. I wasn’t going to let the hairdresser have free rein in this life. It was essential that my new hair be Wellesley appropriate.

While she shampooed and conditioned my hair with all-organic products, I finally let my mind slide into murky waters. The thing was, now that I was in this new situation, I couldn’t imagine a way back. Not knowing what I now knew.

All my life, there’d been no choice. I lived two lives and that was it. Never just one or the other – broken in two and all alone. But now … now there was a chance. Hope. The possibility of a normal existence.

If the physical parts of me were not connected … If what I did in one life in no way affected the other … If I could bleed in one and not the other, cut off parts of myself, dye them different colours … If I could take laxatives and get drunk and have none of those things cause any reaction in my other body, then to some degree – a very relevant degree – I was two separate bodies. And if I was two separate bodies … and one of me was to stop existing … the other should continue.

And I’d have just the one life.

But …

There was still one more test to carry out before things could go any further.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Wellesley, Saturday / Roxbury, Sunday

My new blonde hair, styled the way it had been crying out to be for so long in this world, did not